Americans are starting to understand bubbles and to develop a healthy fear of debt: two reasons why the Obama-Reid-Pelosi model of unified Democratic government is about to get a boot in the pants.

I suspect that as Americans come to understand how investment bubbles work, the golden Clinton years will start to look a lot less attractive in retrospect. Once you subtract the dot-come bubble, the Nineties do not look all that impressive. Perhaps Clinton eventually will be remembered as what he was: the guy who inherited a recovery from George H. W. Bush and handed off a recession to George W. Bush. More thoughts at Exchequer.